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Roads.org.uk 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

@roads.org.uk
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I write about UK road infrastructure and history! Join me for updates and other stuff from the UK's favourite roads website, www.roads.org.uk

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Roads.org.uk 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @roads.org.uk · 24/09/2026
If you’ve ever driven in London, your journey was probably influenced by one retired government driver’s favourite routes. This is the story of how Mr. Beardon unwittingly recast London’s road network. roadsorguk.substack.com/p/signs-and-...
roadsorguk.substack.com
Signs and sensibility
The one great attempt to make London’s streets logical - and how one retired chauffeur’s favourite routes changed the way you get around the capital.
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Roads.org.uk 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @roads.org.uk · 24/09/2026
Just published: the one great attempt to make London’s streets logical, and how one retired chauffeur’s favourite routes changed the way you get around the capital. roadsorguk.substack.com/p/signs-and-...
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Roads.org.uk 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @roads.org.uk · 06/09/2026
I wasn’t going to write while I was away, but sometimes you find something so completely arresting that you have to share it, if only to see if everyone else feels the same goggle-eyed bewilderment. Join me in a brief trip to Tokyo’s Nihonbashi Bridge. roadsorguk.substack.com/p/a-bridge-u...
roadsorguk.substack.com
A bridge under troubled bridges
A visit to Japan to see a bridge that was ruined by another bridge, and a type of highway planning beyond any of the UK’s worst nightmares.
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Roads.org.uk 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @roads.org.uk · 06/09/2026
I think you’re right, it’s a totally different idea of how infrastructure should fit into a city and it works well for Japan. I think what made this stand out is that even here this one is considered egregious and they’re getting rid of it! Another nearby expressway is being turned into a park.
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Roads.org.uk 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @roads.org.uk · 06/09/2026
Just published: great economy or urban vandalism? Nihonbashi Bridge in Tokyo is everything that’s wrong with thoughtless planning, but a fix is in sight. roadsorguk.substack.com/p/a-bridge-u...
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Roads.org.uk 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @roads.org.uk · 31/08/2026
Yes! Which is otherwise so precise in matters of design.
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Roads.org.uk 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @roads.org.uk · 30/08/2026
I’d forgotten those!
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Roads.org.uk 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @roads.org.uk · 30/08/2026
Wobbly wobbly jelly people only. (No, not a manufacturing defect, this is the official design, which a whole committee of people must have looked at and thought, yes, that’s the one.)
Photograph of a blue road sign showing figures of an adult holding hands with a young girl. The symbol is drawn with a strangely wavy and indistinct outline.
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Roads.org.uk 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @roads.org.uk · 30/08/2026
IIRC the current versions (and presumably the ones in your pic that they replaced) show “PARK CLOSED”, as if a banned turn isn’t enough. Probably authorised pre-1965 if it was authorised at all!
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Roads.org.uk 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @roads.org.uk · 20/08/2026
Beautiful! We need more waterfalls beside traffic lights.
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Roads.org.uk 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @roads.org.uk · 13/08/2026
These were gone before my time but I’ve always loved the boundless optimism of them - “one of Britain’s new motorways” feels very much of its time!
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Roads.org.uk 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @roads.org.uk · 10/08/2026
I’m away this summer, so please enjoy this piece I wrote for the Friends of Brompton Cemetery Magazine earlier this year, about one of London’s unbuilt motorways, and what it might have been like to try to exist alongside it.
roadsorguk.substack.com
The monster seen from below
What might it have been like to stand in one spot and witness the arrival, and the uncertainty, of plans for an urban motorway in West London?
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Roads.org.uk 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @roads.org.uk · 10/08/2026
Yes, it definitely works, and the A56/M66 provides a half decent connection to Manchester anyway, but it doesn’t look the way you’d expect on a map. @showmeasign.online will know more about the rationale for what was called the “Fast Route” running to Preston and not Manchester.
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Roads.org.uk 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @roads.org.uk · 10/08/2026
Yes, there’s a lot about it that looks weird from the outside. One thing that always struck me is that it was meant to regenerate Blackburn and Burnley, but to do that they built a road to Preston, not south to Manchester which would seem to be the obvious thing to do economically.
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Roads.org.uk 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @roads.org.uk · 09/08/2026
“Under a flyover” is brilliant TV shorthand for “gritty urban decay”. The space under the Westway roundabout pops up about every half hour on TV for the same reason!
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Roads.org.uk 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @roads.org.uk · 09/08/2026
Yes, that’s quite an incongruous thing in South London. If it helps to put the unbuilt roads into perspective, when it was built, the GLC described the Wandsworth Bridge Southern Approach as a “secondary road”.
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Roads.org.uk 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @roads.org.uk · 09/08/2026
Yes, Boston Manor Park is quite something! Roding Valley Park in Woodford is even more so, it’s between the carriageways of the M11.
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Reposted by Roads.org.uk 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️
Kate Bevan @katebevan.com · 09/08/2026
This is a lovely piece from Chris that he wrote for the Friends of Brompton Cemetery magazine for me earlier this year. If you're interested in unbuilt London and mid-century urban history. it's absolutely for you cc @theroyalparks.bsky.social
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Roads.org.uk 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @roads.org.uk · 09/08/2026
Thank you! I really enjoyed writing it and I’m very glad I can share it. It was lovely to get the commission!
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Roads.org.uk 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @roads.org.uk · 09/08/2026
This piece originally appeared in the Friends of Brompton Cemetery Magazine, with a hat tip to the brilliant @katebevan.com for copy editing and provision of a top tier sausage sandwich.
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Roads.org.uk 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @roads.org.uk · 09/08/2026
What would it have been like to stand in one specific place and see one of London’s vast unbuilt urban motorways going by? Join me for a trip to Brompton Cemetery in West London and we’ll see if we can picture it. roadsorguk.substack.com/p/the-monste...
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Roads.org.uk 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @roads.org.uk · 09/08/2026
It was evidently a local authority project and not a trunk road, so didn’t have strategic backing from Westminster. Without West Yorkshire it couldn’t happen. But evidently Lancashire, if nobody else, had aspirations for it to be another trans-Pennine motorway.
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Roads.org.uk 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @roads.org.uk · 09/08/2026
About 20 years ago I got to spend a day with Harry Yeadon, former Lancs County Surveyor and successor to James Drake. (Yeadon Way in Blackpool is named after him.) He told me Lancashire wanted to continue the M65 east towards Leeds or Bradford, but West Yorkshire were never interested.
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Roads.org.uk 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @roads.org.uk · 09/08/2026
It wasn’t ever a formal plan in the way that M62 and M67 were, and much of the M65 only exists because Lancashire County Council pushed hard for it over many decades - a significant length of it is still a local authority road and not a trunk road at all.
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✨🩷 Skye/Skyler 🩵✨ @ukroadstransport.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
@roads.org.uk
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Roads.org.uk 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @roads.org.uk · 07/08/2026
You could try @lenzarng.bsky.social or @manomaylr.bsky.social who are both going?
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Roads.org.uk 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @roads.org.uk · 07/08/2026
I’m afraid I don’t, I won’t be there because I’m away on holiday right now! Is @showmeasign.online going?
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Roads.org.uk 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @roads.org.uk · 06/08/2026
It’s a shame, the detour is very long and I think steeper. Unless they physically tear up the rest of the path I think people will just carry on using it. Waste of time.
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Roads.org.uk 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @roads.org.uk · 05/08/2026
The answer might lie in dualling dating from the 60s or 70s. The path now being closed was probably built to replace the one integral to the original bypass because widening obliterated it. Maybe orders relating to 60s/70s works made the new path “permissive” somehow.
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Roads.org.uk 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @roads.org.uk · 05/08/2026
Update: this pic shows the bypass in its original configuration, just up the hill from the site in question. It had footpaths and even a crossing point with a refuge. Don’t know why the path would be permissive when a path was provided from the outset. www.britainfromabove.org.uk/en/image/EAW...
britainfromabove.org.uk
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Roads.org.uk 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @roads.org.uk · 05/08/2026
Not sure, though I’ve seen the closure go in and wondered why. This bit of road was opened ca 1927 as the Guildford and Godalming Bypass, and I’d lay money on it having been built with footways.
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Roads.org.uk 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @roads.org.uk · 04/08/2026
Of course! Lofthouse is a Three Level Stacked Roundabout. Theres a whole list of UK junction types here: www.roads.org.uk/interchanges
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Roads.org.uk 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @roads.org.uk · 31/07/2026
That’s magnificent! Very accurate indeed. I’ve got my eye on a similar thing from a similar era made by Lego.
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Roads.org.uk 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @roads.org.uk · 22/07/2026
It’s the short-lived “French horn” sign at Strensham! See my history of this one notorious sliproad here: www.roads.org.uk/blog/imperfe...
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Mike @mikeyashworth.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
Happy birthday to the East Lancs Road - now the A580 - the Liverpool-East Lancashire Road - that was formally opened on this day by HM King George V on this day in 1934 as one of the UK's first inter-city arterial roads. @showmeasign.online @roads.org.uk @sabre-roads.org.uk
Liverpool - East Lancashire Road ; official opening by His Majesty King George V ; 18 July 1934 : Lancashire County Council : 1934 : Radshaw Nook looking west towards Liverpool showing the stark outlines of the new road cutting across open fields and countryside; in the foreground is a roundabout. Cover in embossed gold gilt lettering on a deep blue deckled card. The arms of the County of Lancaster and "Lancashire County Council - Liverpool - East Lancashire Road. Official Opening by HM King George V 18 July 1934".
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Roads.org.uk 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @roads.org.uk · 15/07/2026
We’ve all been there! My radio also gets turned down when parking in a tricky spot. It helps me see better.
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Roads.org.uk 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @roads.org.uk · 12/07/2026
Not as standard, but if you want to stay on the same place for a bit, while standing in direct sunlight, it would get you close to that feeling!
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Roads.org.uk 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @roads.org.uk · 11/07/2026
Spooky! I promise I’m not setting Cheddar Gorge cookies as you browse the Sim… or if I am, it’s become sentient without me knowing 😬
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Roads.org.uk 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @roads.org.uk · 11/07/2026
I will add you to my list! I need to fiddle with the editor a bit more, and then document it, possibly with some video click-throughs, but I think we could be up and running later this year.
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Roads.org.uk 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @roads.org.uk · 11/07/2026
Well, that’s reason enough to carry on right there! I do intend to keep adding routes and I’m working towards having other people contribute too so it’s not just me, so I’m hoping its future is sustainable long term.
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Roads.org.uk 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @roads.org.uk · 11/07/2026
Must have been thinking of the Shoemakers’ Museum in Street! Fixed now, thank you.
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Roads.org.uk 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @roads.org.uk · 11/07/2026
Yes! With virtual brands, mainly for copyright reasons, but also because they’re more fun.
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Roads.org.uk 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @roads.org.uk · 11/07/2026
Just arrived on the Simulator, a virtual drive down to Exeter on the M5 - perfect for a sunny summer weekend away! Plus the little M49 is here, if you’d rather get lost around Avonmouth. Jump in at sim.roads.org.uk.
Graphic of a road sign, generated by the Roads.org.uk Simulator. It shows a route confirmation sign on the M5, with destinations "The SOUTH WEST, Bridgwater, Taunton, Exeter".
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Roads.org.uk 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @roads.org.uk · 07/07/2026
Long answer, the date suggests the 1959 length of M1, the distinctive bridges confirm it. There are only so many two-bridge roundabouts on the M1 J5-19, of which only this one is so noticeably skewed - though I couldn’t remember which one it was without looking! Short answer, a lifetime of geekery.
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Roads.org.uk 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @roads.org.uk · 07/07/2026
Top tier!
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Roads.org.uk 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @roads.org.uk · 07/07/2026
Ooh! Thats a great picture. Pretty sure it’s M1 junction 14, looking north. You can see the several flood culverts under the motorway on the straight beyond the junction. Probably taken in 1959 just before opening because the wear marks on the roundabout don’t show any traffic to the sliproads.
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Roads.org.uk 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @roads.org.uk · 28/06/2026
I’ve never seen this before! What a fantastic image.
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Reposted by Roads.org.uk 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️
LCC municipal @lccmunicipal.bsky.social · 27/06/2026
The first Labour GLC administration in 1965 had ambitious urban motorway plans. But the public mood had changed by the early 1970s, the lived experience of Westway being one (but by no means only) nail in the coffin of those plans. By 1973, the campaign message was firmly anti-motorway:
A Labour campaign poster from the 1973 GLC election (which Labour would go on to win) featuring a North Kensington residential street overshadowed by the elevated Westway motorway.  The text says: Save London
from Motorway Madness
Vote Labour
Greater London Council Election Thursday April 12th
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Roads.org.uk 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @roads.org.uk · 19/06/2026
So that instruction was correct for a year or two and has been misleading for the following 54 or so years 😬
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Roads.org.uk 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @roads.org.uk · 19/06/2026
These are lovely! The Ridgeway Path one is fascinating, must be as old as you say and really unusual in design. I bet there aren’t many like it.
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